Helpless
by Prince of Leaves
Summary: It always feels like the longest ten seconds... Dean's all alone and he can't breathe. He doesn't want to ask for Sam's help. Asthmatic Dean.


He wants it. He needs it.

He'd do anything and everything for it. He'd march through winds made of ice shards, climb a mountain treacherous with avalanches and fend of silvery evil eyed mythical wolves. Air appears to him as a real substance, a bubble of glossy, alien appearance. He would run for miles to grasp it tightly and clutch its precious clarity, order it to never leave.

Dean wants to be that warrior, but all he can actually do is try to concentrate. He's pleading with his chest to give him a moment, just to sit up, maybe it would open up his lungs and he'd do something magical, like fly. Out of desperate habit he reaches out for his salvation, but he knows it isn't where it's supposed to be, intimidating even in its slightness, right on the nightstand where his fingers can curl around it. Even in that, he can relax slightly.

_'My inhaler'_ a pause, an afterthought, a struggled half breath _'please'_

The desperately small voice would mumble out its last words and reach Sam's ears like a gunshot. 'One day, I'll sticky tape it to your elbow,' Sam would say, 'then you'd never lose it.' Still, Sam is patient even though he's exasperated, draws spirals on Dean's shoulder until Dean opens his eyes again. Says 'it's cool, man' even if Dean doesn't say anything, because he knows Dean has skies full of forever gratefulness to him.

He doesn't know where Sam is now.

He doesn't know where the inhaler is at all, is not sure that he has one and that's making him panic. Panic isn't the best reaction. It's like monster claws reaching around his ribs and squeezing them, cruel jabs to lungs that are already sticky with mold. He tells himself to stop it, that it'll be alright, that it always is, it's not a jealous spirit intent on smashing his head on a headstone or vampires with their sinister sick smirks.

It's only breathing, that's all. Nobody needs to think about it, it's just _there._ Then its abrupt absence will smash into him, suddenly he's gasping, with sailors knots tied complicatedly all around his lungs, and he knows it's everything. When he needs it, he wants to apologize, be grateful for every seamless breath.

'Calm down Dean, it'll be fine, calm down,' he whispers to himself, wringing his hands to keep him awake, willing his mind not to melt into misty, warm obscurity. His chest won't let him be so easily, it twists, yanks his oxygen into mazes. Dean gasps, wants to rub at his salty eyes and wonders if the tips of his fingers are bruising.

He used to avoid using the inhaler in public until his knuckles turned white and all he could see was smog. It seemed so wrong; that a man who looked like the ruler of the universe was at the mercy of a gritty puff. Sam imagines Dean with his dying, deprived brain dripping out of his nose, and yells at him to take the inhaler, no matter where they are.

Dean's life has been a wicked ride, but when the oxygen curdles in his lungs and roads become an endless blur of bewilderment and torment, it still tricks him into that end of the world feeling. The doctors don't tell you that not breathing is traumatizing, maybe it's because they don't know that having an attack is actual code for 'I'm fainting, there's no air, oh God help me, I'm going to die.'

There's nothing like it. You're tilting into not existing.

The room is folding in front of Dean's eyes. He feels angry because he hasn't needed an inhaler in quite awhile. The last one had expired because he hadn't used it. He tries to say away from corruptible situations, like deserts and dusty old libraries but its something he can't really control. He likes to be in control, to know where things go, and that machines run smoothly because of what you've told them to do.

It's twisting in his chest, a blade of cold fire. It is a cruel hurt and he's desperate for help. He's always tried to be the helper, wanting to be some sort of super hero, but sometimes he's broken, bleeding and not breathing, and taught how human he really is. He tries to hide hunting injuries from his dad, but he's mostly successful in keeping the attacks a secret. Once, when Sam was having a shower, John was inspecting the newspaper and Dean didn't know where his inhaler was, he couldn't help it.

_'Give me my friggin' inhaler!'_

There's something so utterly raw about not breathing, that nothing else matters.

'I don't know where it is,' his dad had answered, in a syrup all of surprise, indignation and concern.

Sam always knows, Dean wanted to say, if he can't find it, he'll try and make it come back. Then it was grey and blue, and Dean didn't know what day it was. Sam's wet hair dripping onto his cheek.

He can't bear the weakness of it. When he can't breathe, he's entirely helpless.

Now, he wants Sam's help. Maybe Sam doesn't like him anymore. Maybe Sam doesn't want to be stuck with a brother who can't even take care of something as simple as this. Dean tells Sam to grow up, Sam might think it. Dean's choking on his own complexities.

He might've thought out some nifty ways to end his valueless life, but there's no honor in dying like this. Perhaps this time it's fate. The air feels like static, crackling in his lungs like a weak radio reception.

He should call an ambulance but he doesn't know what to say. He coughs, because that's the only interpretation of how he feels. The world is a kaleidoscope, and it spins into oblivion.

* * *

Sam's returned from a coffee run.

'Dean,' he says cheerfully, 'there was apple pie and pecan pie but I might have bought a Snickers instead, because you ate mine…'

Then he hears it, that warning, clanging, stuffy silence. It's the wrong kind of quiet, creeping up his spine. He's felt it before. It's not an injury, because there'd be moans. It's not flu, because there'd be snuffles and sneezes.

It's his brother, alive and dead.

Sam's stunned for a moment, between the door and Dean, the unwrapped Snickers bar caught in his teeth.

'Sammy,' a fading lisp, recalled in his memory, 'I can't find it.'

He wishes Dean would take responsibility, keep the damn thing near him, in his pocket, around his neck. Dean's had nosebleeds and oxygen masks, things that should scare him, but he isn't careful, doesn't care.

Sam didn't know what made him do it, buy an inhaler the other day. He had looked through the Impala's glove box, found everything except something that should always be there. He hadn't asked Dean about it. Maybe his brother didn't have those attacks anymore, now had lungs as sparkly as the melting snowflakes, but Sam wanted something of childhood familiarity.

Dean would gasp, his mouth open wide, as if stealing enough air before someone caught him. He would sit next to Dean, breathe in and out exaggeratedly and Dean would end up mimicking him. They'd both drift off to sleep. He would pry the inhaler out of Dean's fidgety fingers and let them hold onto his arm. Sam felt safe knowing that Dean was alive, in half breaths and scratchy coughs, but still Sam's brother.

'Dean! Wake up!'

He thinks it'll be fine. He doesn't need to call an ambulance. He knows Dean.

* * *

Dean sees a floppy haired caricature. The voice wrapped its ropes around him and called him asunder. He gasps awake, like hicoughing out a river and will drown again, pulled by seaweeds, weighted down by stones.

'Dean,' Sam's voice is like tea, warm and safe.

Help me. Sammy. Help.

'I've got it,' Sam says, before Dean can find the letters in the cracks of his lips.

It's white and new, cold and metallic, a frantic gulp of freedom.

'Hold it in for ten,' the number a twisting mantra in Sam's head _'ten, ten, ten, ten…'_

'_Zero, one, two, three_' Dean counts dizzingly _'ten, ten, ten, ten.'_

He hates those ten seconds. They keep him from knowing his fate.

Then Sam's there, drawing spirals on his shoulder, telling him to take another puff. They murmur the seconds together. Sam holds his breath in too, as if it otherwise won't work and Dean will blur like an old canvas, fade quietly into nothingness.

_Ten, ten, ten, ten…_

Dean's chest clicks and creaks. It's not a moment, its a million years in an orbit of hope.

'I'm breathing,' Dean finally whispers in absolute wonder. It cracks through the horror and makes Sam smile, Dean always says that. He runs his hand through Dean's sticky hair. There are eons of gratefulness in Dean's eyes. He can't remember the last time anyone looked at him like that, if anyone ever will.

'You call me next time alright?' He nudges Dean to the side of the bed, sits down next to him, holds in the lecture about always having that thing around and thinks that the Samulet should have some sort of supernatural inhaler spell.

It's quiet again, but he likes this kind. The world has stilled but they're breathing again in healthy sync.

'I couldn't,' Dean jerks up in panic 'breathe.'

'It's alright,' Sam holds his wrist, 'you can now.'

You couldn't earlier. You almost left. You died with shivering hands.

_'Ten,'_ Dean thinks, _'ten seconds to count all the times you fell and someone helped you up.'_

* * *

**Thank you for reading. **


End file.
